Octave Lapize

Octave Lapize was a French professional road racing cyclist and track cyclist, born in 1887 and died in 1917. He is most famous for winning the 1910 Tour de France, and he also took a bronze medal in the men's 100 kilometres at the 1908 Summer Olympics. He was a three-time winner of one-day classics, taking Paris-Roubaix and Paris-Brussels. He started the Tour six times between 1909 and 1914 and finished only once, in 1910, when he beat his Alcyon team-mate François Faber by four points after Faber collided with a dog at the foot of the Pyrenees. The First World War ended his cycling career: as a fighter pilot in the French army he was shot down near Flirey on 14 July 1917 and died in hospital in Toul.